Unofficial news and tips about Google

November 29, 2008

More Ways to Hide Google SearchWiki

In a recent interview with Cedric Dupont, product manager for Google SearchWiki, we found that Google doesn't intend to provide an option to disable SearchWiki. "While users don't have the option of turning off SearchWiki, they do have the option not to use the feature. By turning off the feature entirely, people will never get used to the new offering or see how it might be useful to them. We encourage people to try it out."

Fortunately, there are some ways to hide SearchWiki's visual clutter:

1. Sign out from your Google account. The feature is only available to authenticated users since it's a way to customize search results.

4. If you enable any Google Experimental feature except "SearchWiki with sound", you'll no longer see Google SearchWiki. Probably the most useful experiment you can enable is "Keyboard shortcuts", which adds shortcuts to Google search. Joining an experiment changes your Google cookie, so the experiment is enabled in the current browser and only until you delete Google's cookie.

SearchWiki aficionados can enable "SearchWiki with sound" to hear a sound effect when a search result is removed. "Do you enjoy having the power to remove results from your search results pages? Now you can do so in style by having a sound effect play along with the animation whenever you remove a result. Recorded by our co-founder Sergey Brin himself, this sound effect is sure to please!"

SearchWiki feature doesnt appear for me as well. I guess the feature is enabled to only few google accounts. Maybe based on geographical location. I am from India and I do not see SearchWiki enabled for me. I checked even my google account settings and search preferences, but not find a way to enable. Irony!! your article explains ways to disable the feature :)

I really don't mind this feature, although I never use it. One thing I sometimes do is search for my site (ductapeinnovations.com) on Google with duct tape and see what page it's on, and if I used search wiki it would be inaccurate. I may use it for other searches.

I, not only don't mind, but, like SearchWiki.There might be things done to make it "less" distracting", although the light gray is quite light as to not be distracting. The hovering icons idea is nice but can be a problem, it may be better if there were a toggle, in which case when you want to edit the results you hit the "Edit this search" button and go about shuffling the results, otherwise you proceed as if there's nothing different.

I am familiar with the idea that users just "get used to" new services, but in this case I simply cannot see myself 'promoting' websites up the rankings.I mean what is the use-case for this? I assume it is : Searches that we do repeatedly, and wish to re-order the results so that our prefered results are at the top, yes? So can someone explain why we don't just make a bookmark folder and store the favoured results of this repeated search?And why would we want to stop ourselves finding NEW listings and stick with a pre-conceived notion of what the best results are?

This seems like going to the doctor with a headache, being prescribed aspirin and then next time I visit the doctor with a headache I just say to him "give me aspirin, that's my preferred outcome". Just perhaps I need something else this time, just perhaps that's why I went to the doctor in the first place?For some advice?If I want to know what I already know, then I will ask myself!